Relishing the radiance of celebrity chitchat

Published 3:35 pm, Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Because my job description hereabouts at The Chronicle includes occasional conversations with celebrities, I relished a recent chance to pore over Robert Kerwin's "Hollywood Hack: Adventures of a Celebrity Wannabe," just published as a Kindle e-book. Kerwin worked for years on the movie circuit, churning out freelance reports of one-on-one heart-to-heart talks with stars, most of whom were offered to him/pushed at him by studios and publicists promoting movies.

The book includes revealing glimpses of the subjects, old-time Hollywood stars like Katharine Hepburnand John Wayne, but more than that, it sheds light on the whole interview process.

That side of it is a tale I'm going to summarize here with a few selected quotes:

-- The journalist has the power, sort of: "I could sit there smiling at a celebrity as if I admired everything" but at the same time "my italics mind down below there spewed thoughts and emotions that were precisely the opposite. ... It was like being schizophrenic."

-- A star has the power, sort of: "A seasoned publicist, drunk at a bar in Malibu, cleared it up once and for all. 'To them you're on the level of a garden boy. He don't take it personal, OK? ' ... Nevertheless, interview after interview, no sooner had the star shaken my hand than ... I became saturated once more with a soppy hope that this would be the time, that this star was the star with whom I'd become 'a close personal friend.' "

-- And then, sometimes, the star bites: " 'Here we are, pretending, aren't we. We're playacting, as if we're old friends, a tea-and-sympathy tete-a-tete. ... Do you see how faked this is?" asked Glenda Jackson. "You sitting there, smiling your moony smile, meanwhile you're doing your damnedest to get out of me all the dirt you can about my personal life."

During an interview with Carroll O'Connor, in a bar-restaurant owned by O'Connor, "I was getting saleable stuff out of O'Connor, who, with good quotable quotes, was ripping into everything and everybody. ... As he raved on, all at once I saw that his fingers were continuously tapping the tabletop." The taps moved to the tape recorder, tapping the top of it, then the side, and finally "the nail of his index finger was picking at the recorder."

When Kerwin went home and tried to replay the tape, he discovered that although the first part of the interview was audible, by some time in the middle, O'Connor had turned down the volume dial. Most of what he said was unintelligible. "Heh heh heh. Carroll O'Connor had taken the media for a ride. This is what they do."

-- Janice Houghsays she's finally understanding Facebook's privacy policy. "It is your job to read up on every update and make sure your personal information and pictures are private. Unless you are related to the founder."

-- True romantic Jamie Jobbs was happy to know that Craig Newmark, who got married last week, met his bride in real life, at a cafe on Cole Street, not on Facebook.

Bertrand Pellegrin, branding consultant, author of "Branding the Man" and frequent Chronicle contributor, was walking on Russian Hill and came upon a cache of photographs. They were taken by Butch Baluyut and appeared to be portraits of members of the local Filipino community, photos taken for a book he published 30 or so years ago.

They are "beautiful, large-format black-and-white photos," he said, and on the sidewalk, too, was a darkroom enlarger.

Baluyut died in 2003, just after his ordination as a Zen monk. "It seemed so disrespectful," writes Pellegrin of the find, "and just sad. Stacks upon stacks. I tried to gather what I could and carried them here to my office. No idea what to do with them."

Public Eavesdropping

"He is one of those Americans who should be European. He speaks several languages, plays musical instruments, cooks and is always doing something interesting."

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